Episode 8: Lakers offseason and the Steph Curry Conundrum

makes it that much worse. My wife just finished her quarantine today and it's just getting back to work and she's you know, behind and everything, and she's really been struggling trying to float the ship from home and that's just really really hard. So I hope all of you make responsible decisions this weekend. If you're gonna hang out with your family, try to do it in a way that's not going to lead to a bunch of consequences after the fact. Um. Today, I'm gonna talk a little

bit about the Laker off season. I know it's not completely done, but these last couple moves, these last couple veteran minimum spots that they have are most likely going to be used on guys who are gonna be good locker room presences because you don't wanna play too much with that chemistry on the team. So I don't think there's too much more we have to wait for there, and that if they do end up trading Kyle Kuzma, my guess is it won't happen until the trade deadline

this year. So I think what you've seen in the last week is basically what you're gonna get as far as the Lakers go heading into training camping into the first few months of the season. Uh. Then I have a little point I want to make about Trey Young and Devin Booker, a couple of guys who a lot of people who are fans of Atlanta and fans of

Phoenix have been defending for a long time. Uh uh, And I'm just gonna explain why I think it's okay to show just a little bit of hesitancy with those types of guys after spending all those years playing losing basketball, and then, last but not least, a lot of my Steph Curry fan friends, a lot of my Golden State Twitter friends out there are always frustrated with the type of doubt that is casted towards Steph Curry, and you're seeing a lot of that again this year, um, as

we head into this in uh, this Clay Thompson injury season. And so I want to talk a little bit about why I think Steph gets so much doubt placed in his direction. And honestly, you know, I understand that it can be unfair at times, but it's just the reality of his situation and I think it's why he's discussed the way he's discussed. So I'll get to that here in a little bit, but let's start with the Lakers.

So I think the Lakers had a nearly perfect offseason, and I think it's okay to acknowledge the fact that it wasn't fixed. And quite frankly, if any GM was always perfect, they win a title every single year, and that's just not possible. Everybody does the best they can. They make a series of moves. You make, swings, you make uh, you make, you take risks, and you hope that most of them work out in your favor. And

for the record, the Lakers did mostly good. And one of my favorite things is, uh, there are a lot of the moves that they made remind me kind of of the moves that the Cleveland Cavaliers made at the trade deadline in two thousand eighteen, in the sense that they are kind of swing for the fences types of moves that have major upside, like Tre's, like Dennis Shrewder. But at the same time, they didn't sacrifice their core

identity of the team. If you remember with that two thousand eighteen Calves team, they brought in Rodney Hood, who was a guy who always had a lot of potential, but no one was ever really sure if he was going to be able to, you know, uh, contribute in a winning environment. And then you know, Larry and Ants Jr. Was a very athletic and exciting prospect that was playing for the Lakers. George Hill was a guy who had played in a bunch of big playoff series with Indiana

and with San Antonio. There was a lot of like hope that those guys would potentially raise the ceiling. But then in the postseason when the ship hit the fan, they were able to fall back on their core lineup, which was j R. Smith and Kyle Korver, Lebron, Kevin Love and Tristan Thompson, and they did that to beat the Indiana Pacers in the first round, and they went back to that lineup often in the later rounds of

that of that playoff run. The point being, they made moves that were aggressive, that had the ability to potentially lead to massive, a massive raising of their ceiling. But at the same time, they kept their identity. And that's what I love about these Laker moves. Montrese Harrold could end up being a massive ceiling raiser for the Lakers, and we'll talk about why in a minute. The same

goes for Dennis Schroeder. But again, if the ship hits the fan and those guys are really painting out, You've still got Alex Cruzo, you still got Contous Contavious called Well Pope, you still got Lebron, you still got Anthony Davis, you still got Mark Keith Moore's Wesley Matthews is basically a reasonable facsimile of Danny Green. He can fill his

role pretty well. The point being is those that Keith signing and that Contavious call Well Pope signing, we're both extremely important because they allowed the Lakers to maintain their core identity so they can fall back to that brand of basketball should things not work out with their more aggressive moves that they made in the off season. So that's what I liked, and we'll talk a little bit more about um you know what, I what I really

like about those individual players. But the one thing that made this offseason less than perfect in my opinion, was the montrez Harold signing. And I know a lot of my Laker friends out there are taking a glass half full approach to this, and don't get me wrong, I

am too. I also believe that Montrese will work out at least to some extent with the Lakers, but it was the one real shaky move in the sense that it caused a lot of dominoes to fall with other players on the roster and it really hamstrings their uh,

their flexibility moving forward. So, for instance, as you guys know, that Montrese Harold signing triggered the hard cap for the Lakers, which led to, among other things, Dwight Howard and Avery Bradley leaving because both of those players, had they not had a hardcap, the Lakers would have been able to match their contract offers and they would have come back. So, for instance, let's say I said, I said, from the very beginning, the only player that I thought was worth

the hardcap was Serge Ibaka. I thought that he significantly raised the Lakers ceiling because of his perimeter shooting and because he's a very good defense of player at the five, And so that was the one move that I thought was worth all of the potential dominoes falling the Avery Bradley leaving the Dwight Howard leaving the hard capping of the of the team for the rest of the season. That was the one guy that I thought that was worth.

But we don't know for sure whether Surge would have come, So even in the scenario where Surge was for sure going to the Clippers, I still think Montrez wasn't worth all of the other handicapping that he did to the roster. For instance, for a lot of you guys who have said to me in recent days, Wesley Matthews would have

triggered triggered the hard cot. That's true. However, you can use a portion of that mid level exception without triggering the hardcap, and the Lakers could have used that portion of the of the mid level exception to sign Wesley Matthews instead of using that biannual exception. In addition to that,

they could have brought back to d White Howard. So let's say Dwight Howard takes all of Tress minutes or a portion of Tress minutes, and even though he's a very different player, you can actually you can relatively assume that he'd give you roughly seventy percent of his expected impact on the game, because at least the defensive matchups that played him off the floor theoretically will do the

same thing to Montrese. And while Montrese Harold has a much higher offensive ceiling, Dwight Howard did have a much higher defensive ceiling. So consider that to be not a wash. Tris is a better player, but Dwight Howard is at least in the same ballpark of impact in that position. So theoretically, it's not just signing Montrese Harold. It's signing Montrese Harold, and it costs you Dwight, and it costs

you Avery Bradley. So there was a universe where the Lakers could have had a more conservative approach to the off season. Let's say they call they call Surge Baka, and Serge Baca says heck no, I'm playing with Kauai. There's no way in the world I'm coming to LT to play with the Lakers. Okay, fine, you signed Montrese you excuse you signed Dwight Howard at his ten percent

raise or whatever it was for three million bucks. You signed Wesley Matthews for the half of the mid level exception, you sign uh, you signed Marcus s al for the veteran minimum contract, and you signed Avery Bradley for his

regular ten percent raise or whatever. Now you've got that extra body in the back court so that when you play down size, when you play Lebron at the four and Anthony Davis at the five, you have the ability to have five guards to rotate through those three spots as opposed to four guards because k CP Alex Caruso, Dennis Shrewder, and Wesley Matthews or your core four. Now, maybe maybe the Lakers are told Avery badly, like, hey, we plan on playing a lot of talent Horton Tucker.

We don't know. I'm just operating under the premise that the Lakers could have had those guys back, had a little bit more death. Dwight Howard fits into whatever that Montrose Harrold role is and then most importantly, as the season progresses, if a need arises in a Nick Betune type of player comes available, you have the ability to sign him. You have the ability to constantly go over the cap for a veteran minimum contract as the season progresses.

Who knows who's gonna get hurt, who knows what's gonna happen. You always have that fallback option of signing a veteran minimum player that is off the table as a result of the Montrese Harold signing. And so as a result, now your only option to improve the roster or to add depth should injuries become a problem is you have to take a bigger salary player. You have to take somebody like a uh like a Montrese Harold or a contagious call Well Pope, and you have to trade them

and take back multiple players. That's your only way to fill roster spots at that point. Because the hard cap is the hard cap. There's absolutely no exception to that rule. Just ask any Golden State Warrior fan who was rooting for them last year. So my my whole point following kind of to put a bowl on it, is that the Montrese Harrold signing in a vacuum for nine million dollars a year is amazing. Maybe he raises your ceiling. He certainly helps with your bench lineups, and you've already

got your core crunch time guys. So if Montrese doesn't really work as a crunch time player, you can fall back to your core lineups. So it makes sense in that context. However, when you actually factor in all of the other dominoes that fell, losing Avery Bradley, losing Dwight Howard, losing the flexibility to sign veteran minimum players later on in the season, I thought that that was a mistake.

And with all of those potential losses, I thought Sergebaca was the only player that would have been worth tying off all of those other loose ends to get, And so I thought that that was the one, you know, one potential thing that would have been a mistake out of this offseason. Other than that Roblinka completely oocked it out of the park. I think Wesley Matthews is a much better player than Danny Green. I think he's much

better at the point of attack. I thought Danny Green and his tendency to give up a lot of straight line drives really hurt the Laker defense. I thought it caused them to exist too much in chaos, which while they were good at that, it wasn't ideally what you'd like to do. And and ironic, and the most important thing is existing in chaos takes a lot of energy.

And that's one of the big reasons why the Lakers would on some nights have inconsistent defensive performances because effort is hard to bring on an on a night to night basis. And if you've got a lot of guys that are giving up straight line drives, you're gonna constantly be living in rotation, which is gonna expose a team that doesn't necessarily play hard on that particular night, which the Lakers, like I said, had a tendency to do

from time to time. Raised on Rondo and Danny Green were both the worst players on the Laker roster as it as it pertained to giving up straight line drives. There was almost no resistance from quicker guards who are trying to get past them. Replacing those two guys with Wesley Matthews, who's one of the better point of attack

defenders in the league. In terms of not giving up straight line drives, and Dennis Shrewder, who's not the same level of player defensively as Wesley Matthews, but certainly a

hell of a lot better than Region Rondo. Adding those two guys into the Laker defensive scheme, I believe will make them much more reliable night in and night out as a defensive team, which will carry them in the regular season, and and it will prevent them from having things happen like what they had last year, which was we're way better than all these teams, but we're just gonna drop a game in each playoff series because there's gonna be a game where we come out and we

just don't have our energy that we usually do. As far as Montrese Harrold goes, if there's a there's like

a best case scenario in a worst case scenario. So the best case scenario is getting next to Lebron and getting into peak physical condition, as Lebron tends to do with his teammates, getting next to Anthony Davis, who can help cover for some of his defensive limitations, getting with Frank Vogel, who is an extremely gifted defensive coach, and as You've seen in a lot of these postseason UH interviews that have been done, the Laker prayer players have

raved and raved about just how great Frank Vogel is preparing for an opposing offense and with his scouting reports and stuff. Your hope is that all of those things that I just said lead to Montrez Harrold becoming a better defensive player than he had been in with the Clippers. And if that happens, then you're looking at that peak potential scenario, which is Mantres is a home run who massively raises the ceiling of the Lakers, But even in the scenario where it doesn't work out that way, he

continues to be a defensive liability. The Lebron's, the Anthony Davis is, the Frank Vogels of the world cannot help him in that regard. He still is a bench weapon. He still is a guy. The Lakers were giving significant minutes to JaVale McGee, who, while he had his defensive flashes, was such a space case and rotations and getting out of position. He always left his feed. He had no discipline to stay on the ground. JaVale McKee was was not a great defensive player. Even uh Dwight Howard in

some playoff series got played off the floor. So Montrese just is another guy like those two who comes with some defensive limitations but can help you in the bench

lineups that can help you against specific defensive schemes. They're going to be They're going to be matchups where defenses switch everything, and it's going to help to have Montrese Harrold as an option as a player who can bully a smaller player in a post up mismatch that he brings a lot of things to the table that make it so that his floor is higher, meaning that the ugly version of whatever the Montrese Harrold experience looks like still ends up being pretty good and pretty impactful for

the Lakers. As far as marcusol goes, I view him as a uh A great risk in the sense that it's impossible for him to be any worse than say JaVale McGee was right like we were just talking about. So from that standpoint, you've got a player that even if he plays fifteen minutes a night for only fifty games of the season, at the very least, if you manage him and you keep him healthy, he's just an option, he's a wrinkle, he's a guy that just gives you

another way to win. And that's important in the sense that in a playoff series, it's a it's a it's an audible that you can call to try to get things moving if you're stuck in a matchup where you can't really get the offense moving or whatever the problem is.

And then that night and night out in the regular season, as you're dealing with load management, as you're dealing with the fatigue and the and the struggle that comes with playing that much basketball dragged out over that many months, especially on this quick turnaround, having that veteran presence is so important for for this particular type of season for

the Lakers. So again, all those things I just said, all of those signings, all of those moves were about as perfect and off the off season as you could possibly hope for as a Laker fan. I just think that the Montrese Harold signing has potential to be what will what will look back at as a mistake. But at the end of the day, no matter what happens, if you find yourself in a pivotal late round playoff

series against the Lakers. Let's say it's the Western Conference Semifinals and you're playing the Warriors, are playing the Denver Nuggets, You're playing the Utah Jazz, and it's Game five and the series has tied it to The Lakers have the ability to put out Alex Carusoe, contagious called Will Pope, Lebron James, Anthony Davis, and either West Matthews or Mark Keith Morris depending on the matchup. And I know those guys are going to completely stifle you on the defensive

end of the floor. And I know those guys are gonna be able to find and quality offense on the other end, because Lebron is the best basketball player in the world, and Anthony Davis is the third or fourth best basketball player in the world, and all those other guys fit those roles absolutely perfect. So they have exactly what they need to win, and they might have what they need to be even more dominant than they were

last year. And why is that important? Because, like I tweeted this morning, the Lakers were one of the most dominant champions in the history of the league. If you look at just this century, from the year two thousand on, they're right there with the two thousand one Lakers, with the two thousand seven Spurs as one of the most dominant playoff teams that we've seen, basically only the two

thousand seventeen Warriors being demonstratively better. So from that standpoint of well, the two thousand one Lakers too, but the point being, they are already so so good, and so what was beautiful about Rob Polinka did. What Rob Plinka did was he took some swings, but he salvaged those core pieces that the Lakers needed to at least have a fallback plan that we know is capable of winning an NBA championship. All Right, we're gonna move on to

UH quickly to trade Young and Devin Booker. M So, there are a lot, like I said, a lot of Atlanta Hawks fans, a lot of UH Phoenix Suns fans, a lot of like general NBA fans who have been all over Twitter over the last couple of days going like, you know, you guys have done nothing but trash tray Young blah blah blah blah, and now he's gonna get to go do his thing blah blah blah blah blah. Defensive of the fact that we most of us. I like to think that I'm in the majority on this one.

We're about to throw a party for a guy dropping thirty points a game, giving up more than thirty on the other end, and losing almost every night. It just was never anything that was significant to me when there were other players in the league who were doing more winning efforts. And I'm going to use myself as an example here. My first year playing in college, I played uh Pimo Community College, which was a local junior college

in Tucson. I literally lived with my parents and commuted to and from uh to and from classes and to and from games, and I put up monster numbers. I had over thirty points in a game. I had a half dozen games where I had over twenty points. I was dunking on dudes, I was shooting three pointers from twenty five ft from the basket. It was awesome. We went four in our team was awful. And what was so interesting about that is each successive year after that

I played for better teams. After that, I wanted to play for a better team. So I sent a highlight tape out and I ended up getting signed by a junior college in Utah that was a much much better team and we want a lot more games. And my scoring went down and I only averaged I think twelve points a game that year. I only got over twenty points once I had. Most of my scoring efforts were in the teens. And it was because I was playing winning basketball. I I wasn't taking the same you know,

terrible shot selection. I was taking shots within a flow of in offense. I didn't have super fresh legs on the offensive end because I had to focus on the defensive end of the floor. And you know what, I

still was an All Conference player. I was not an All Conference player at Pima, even though I was putting a much better numbers, because the coaching staffs around the conference who were responsible for voting for those awards, they didn't care about the big white dude at Pima that was scoring a lot of points while they were beating us by twenty. They just didn't care. And more power

to them. I don't blame them. And yet in Utah, when I was scoring less, but I was playing a role on a on a program that was winning a lot more games, I ended up getting an All Conference on it because the coaches were actually paying attention to what I was doing impacting games. And then the following year after that, I played for one of the best teams in the country. I played for an n ai A school who's top five in the n A I A. We beat an n C Double A Division one school,

and I was playing alongside two All American guards. And guess what, I only averaged like six points a game. I was Trevor Reesa. I shot spot up threes. All of those isolation opportunities I was getting, all those postop

opportunities I was getting, those were gone. Now I was playing a completely different role in a much like in a in a in not just a winning environment, but a championship level winning environment, and I had to play differently, and I got a lot more respect from my from my peers, not only in on that team, but around the league doing what I was doing for that specific team as one of the best teams in the country. Then I was scoring tons and tons of points for PIMA.

And I say all that to say this, I understand that trade young, super talented. I understand that Devin Booker is really talented. I was really impressed by what he did in the bubble because he was winning games, but The bottom line is, I think it's just normal human nature to feel to to just to say show me the money, to basically say, you know what, I'm gonna form my opinion about Trey Young. I'm gonna form my opinion about Devin Booker now now that they're playing with

enough talent to get the job done. Because guess what if Devin Booker is averaging twenty seven points a game on effective field goal percentage and his team goes and and twenty three or whatever it is, that adds up to seventy two. I just rushed that, so who knows. But if he does that and then he proceeds to be as effective in a you know, playoff run, now we can have a conversation about how he's one of the twelve or thirteen best players in the league. And

the same goes for Trey Young. It's okay to ask them to do it in a winning effort before giving them that that that recognition, you know what I'm saying. Like I was able to get a highlight tape from Pima. I was able to leverage that into an opportunity to play basketball at a higher level. But it's not like anybody was giving me a trophy for what I was doing. Then It's not like anybody was giving me any real recognition,

and they shouldn't have been. It is a lot easier to score thirty points a game as a terrible team who rolls up into Los Angeles, or heck, you're at home in Atlanta and l A has flown to town on a random February Tuesday, and Lebron and a d are looking at each other like, man, let's just get through this one. And they've barely scouted you, and they don't care, and you can put up thirty points because

they're sleepwalking through this random regular season game. That is different then what it's like as Chris Paul and Devin Booker and the forty eight wins Sons roll up into a meaningful Sunday primetime game, you know, against the Milwaukee Bucks in Milwaukee, and Janice and coach Budenholzer have been sitting in a room looking at a white board telling each other that you're dangerous and that they need to bring their a game to beat you. That's an entirely

different type of operation. And I think it's okay to withhold any sort of opinion about Trey Young and Devin Booker until they show us they can do it in this type of role on a team that's dangerous, where whether or not they perform to what their expectation is is the difference between winning and losing, not the difference between losing by thirty or losing by twenty. So that's

why I'm at with Trey Young and Devin Booker. Asked me again in a few months, then I'll tell you how I feel about them after they've played some real basketball. So the last thing I want to talk about today is this, Uh, the last thing I want to talk about today is this Steph Curry phenomenon that's been going around.

So a couple of my close friends that are Golden State fans have frequently complained to me about the fact that while every other superstar receives a certain amount of hate, you know, which is normal, I guess, in the social media era of of NBA basketball, that Steph Curry gets more than your average superstar, that he is too frequently by too many people perceived to be not even among the top tier of superstars in the league, and that he is incredibly painfully underrated. And for the record, I

agree with them. I think that step is painfully underrated. I think he's the second best player in the league, and I think that he's the twelve or thirteen best player of all time. And I am a hundred percent of believer in what he does to impact winning night in and night out, and I believe he deserves that recognition.

But I think there is a reason why there are so many people that don't agree with me on that, and the reason why Steph has so many detractors in the world, And it's a simples alt of the fact that there's just a lot of question marks surrounding steps individual impact in in his UH championship pursuit over the last decade. And when I say question marks, I don't mean that you know, you can't possibly reach any sort

of conclusion. I'm just saying that there it is possible to interpret some of the things that have happened to him over the past decade as not a result to him. And I would say that those people are wrong, but I'm saying there's a reason why they've reached that conclusion. The reality is these are facts. Now. In two thousand fifteen, Steph Curry benefited from a great deal of injury luck on the way to winning a championship. He played amazing. He apt in my book, he was the finals MVP.

In my book, he was a champion. But there are a lot of people who look at that playoff run and go, hey, you somehow skipped out on Chris Paul. You have somehow skipped out on Kyrie Irving. You know, even in those other matchups, there were some injuries that played a role. Like okay, like but let's see what happens. And then two thousand sixteen comes along and he loses, and then Kevin Durant comes into the picture and they win twice rather handily, but Kevin Durant was in the picture.

Then two thousand nineteen comes around, Kevin Durank gets hurt and they end up losing. And then comes around and Clay Thompson's out all season and he's broken down with injury all year, and they end up missing the playoffs. The point is, if you're a smart basketball fan who is watching the games and you see Steph Curry's impact, you can reach the conclusion that it's obvious, in my opinion, that he is largely responsible for the success of that franchise.

Over the last decade and undercutting that as silly. But the reality is there is a whole lot of evidence that a lot of things have broken Steph Curry's way, and just from a shallow perspective looking at it without really digging into deep And I've said the same thing about Kevin Durant, Kevin Durant and Steph Curry, both of them when they decided to join forces, given the amount of talent that was already on that Golden State roster, they added confusion, a lack of clarity to their standing

in the league. When you do it on a more traditional contender, when you do it on a team that's one of the best teams in the league instead of ten times better than every other team in the league, it's really easy for folks to point at it and say, hey, look like that guy is clearly the best player in the league. There's a reason why Lebron haters sounds so

silly when they start trying to tear him down. There is so much evidence, in so many circumstances, on so many different rosters, that he's gonna that he's capable of winning a championship. Give him a broken down Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh he can win a title. Give him kind of flawed superstars and and Kevin Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving. He can win a title. Give him a stretch big like Anthony Davis, who is one of the best defensive players in the league and a gifted offensive player.

He can win a championship. Give him bad rosters, he can carry him to the NBA Finals. There are all of these different examples in his career that takes away the fog. It has a It leaves a clarity surrounding his career that makes it obvious what his impact is. Whereas with Steph Curry because of the great deal of good fortune. Every star benefits from some amount of good fortune over the course of their career. That's how they

end up in the pantheon of NBA greats. But Steph Curry's good fortune that he encountered is at another level. It's not very often that you can win a championship where all of the best teams lose their lose core star rotation pieces. It's not very often that you can already have a championship contending roster like the Lakers, and then add to that a perennial MVP candidate who's one of the eleven or twelve best players of all time in the heat of his prime, and add him to

that mix those sorts of things. When you make that decision to play together and that circumstance, you take away some of the clarity of your own impact. Now, I say props to step Curry, because that shows you that he cares so much more about winning that he doesn't even care about his individual accolades to the extent that he would willingly look at that situation and go, If I had Kevin Durant, people might think he's the best

player on this team. If I had Kevin Durant, people are going to think, I, you know, ran from a with the Cleveland Cavaliers. If I had Kevin Durant, it's going to diminish what my personal legacy might show in the eyes of many. And he did it anyway, because all he cares about is winning. All I'm saying is

that's what happened. Making that decision diminished some of the clarity surrounding his own personal individual greatness, and as a result, you have an army of mouth breathers out there who aren't really watching the games, who don't really see what Steph Curry brings to the table, and they use that as an example to undercut what he has done in his career. Obviously, Steph is talented enough to carry this limited Warriors team and a stacked Western Conference to the playoffs.

I absolutely think he's capable of that. But the reason why you're gonna have all these guys saying he can't is because they haven't seen it yet, because he's had such a good run of fortune over this stretch of his career, and a lot of those folks never watched him back in with Jared Jack and a baby Clay Thompson and a baby Draymond Green carry that team to win a to within a couple of wins of knocking off the Spurs. They weren't even watching him back then.

They don't understand all the things that he's done, and that's how you end up with this type of scenario where you've got all of these guys that are massively undercutting one of the twelve best players ever. I think it's really unfortunate. Hopefully it goes away here over the next few years, as Steph puts together a couple more, you know, championship level campaigns, best player in the world level campaigns, maybe some of that doubt will leave. But

that's that's why we are where we are. And what's gonna be really unfortunate. And I've talked about this on Twitter a few times over the past couple over the past week. There's some danger here in this Warriors team. Warriors team, there's some danger here that it could end up going like the two thousand nine teen Lakers. You've got a lot of young players. I know, Andrew Wiggins has been in the league while, but he's still pretty young.

And this center they picked up, I'm I'm blinking on his name right now, um, but with the number two overall pick, it's a really really young player. And then you've got a bunch of young role players and your only veterans on the roster. It's basically it's basically Draymond Green and Steph are the veterans on the roster. Brad Wannamaker is really young, Kelly you Bre is really young. There's a lot of youth on that roster. It's a

lot like that's twenty nineteen Lakers team. So if Steph Curry, who has shown a tendency to be banged up in his career. He's missed a lot of games in almost every single season outside of maybe two thousand seventeen. The reality is he might miss some games, and if he has a lebron esque season where he misses games, he misses fifteen games, that team will miss the playoffs. Because that's what happens in the Western Conference with how talented

all the teams are. From one to this year, it's like one to fourteen, But back in there were you know, eleven or twelve really really talented teams. You just you need your best guys to be there every night or it's not gonna be enough for you to get there. And what's gonna be really unfortunate, and I'd say that there's roughly a coin flip chance of this happening is if Steph Curry has another season where he's pretty banged

up and they end up missing the playoffs. That army of voices that has undercut Steph Curry for his entire career, based on all of the things that I just said, those people are just going to continue to get louder and louder, and I think that that's really unfortunate. Alrighty, so um, I am still working on scheduling with Raj. You guys know him as unwritten rules on on here. I'm gonna get him on next week and we're gonna break down each of the Laker off season moves in

a little more depth. Is one of my favorites. I think he's a really really smart guy. He really breaks down a lot of film. He's uh one of the nerds that I think brings great perspective. And I say basketball nerd as a as a complimentary, uh term, but I'm really looking forward to breaking some down some of these moves with him. I'm still planning on doing my special Star Wars breakdown. It's just a holiday week has been a little crazy, and then, like I said, me

catching COVID kind of threw everything off. But we'll get to that next week as well. And then NBA training camps are starting, and I'm pretty sure that we're gonna have a Laker preseason game here within the next couple of weeks, so we'll have some liquor basketball to break down soon. But anyway, as always, I really really appreciate all of you for your support and for your listening and just continue to stay tuned to my Twitter feed and let you know when I plan on doing another

one of these. Look out on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, in YouTube as well. I'll tweet out the links if you missed part of this show and you want to see the whole thing. All right, guy, happy, have a happy Thanksgiving. Like I said, be careful, it's not worth catching covid. I can promise you that. Enjoy the rest of your week and I will talk to you guys next week.